There's no statement from either Channel Four or the show about this out-of-the-blue block but it appears from past Daily Show statements on their forum that they only do the blocking on the request of a country's license holder. Incidentally, I was able to leave a comment on their website and I see that the show's producers do respond to comment. Channel Four offers no such option, there is no comment space offered for the show and they have no forum or similar space for viewers to talk back to them.
What is particularly sad/appalling about Channel Four's actions is that all online video from the extensive Daily Show online archive is now being blocked for UK - yet Channel Four is only showing the past week's shows online! Do they even have rights to episodes from before they started showing the Daily Show, because I can't watch clips from 2000.
What is so stupid about this (and it has multiple layers of stupid) is that I have been posting clips on my blog which promotes the show Channel Four have rights to! Now none of those embedded clips work and so the show gets no (free) promotion from me or the many others who embed clips.
When the Daily Show's sister program The Colbert Report was being shown on a UK cable channel you couldn't watch clips on their website - but you could watch clips embedded on other websites. This makes complete sense as if you liked what you saw it promoted the cable channel's show and made it far more likely that you'd bother to subscribe to it. It also makes it appear that C4's block request included blocking embedded clips.
At the same time that one bit of C4 takes this completely stupid action another makes clips from C4 news freely available, even ad free!
Here's another stupidity. I have watched clips from US shows which have served up country specific ads. On sites like HuffPost I get UK ads. So if you can recognise I'm from the UK you can monetise it to the benefit of the UK license holder. Hardly rocket science.
What C4 are doing is tragic for the Daily Show itself as it is going to lose a significant chunk of its UK audience. All - one would assume - in the name of driving viewers back to watching the show on More4 ON TV!
I hope that the show's resident Brit, the hugely popular John Oliver, learns about it and tells Channel Four to stop behaving like idiots.
Of course people can watch Daily Show clips if they know how to get around the block by hiding their computer's ip address. This means C4 lose out on any hope of ad revenue. I won't even bother linking to how because a simple Google (or a look on the Daily Show's forums where they allow comments explaining how) will tell you what to do. So not only are C4 idiots but they think the rest of us UK fans of the show are too.
Addendum: Tony Lee has commented on the cross-post of this on the Online Journalism blog that:
Channel 4 denies the above. I wrote them and got the following response:
Thank you for contacting us regarding THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART.
We would advise that although we do indeed hold UK broadcast rights for the series, the overall rights to the series are owned by Comedy Central themselves. Content on their website, as with other American networks, is blocked to residents not in the US. These blocks are placed by the channel themselves, not Channel 4.
It is the same with content on UK broadcasters website being blocked to those outside the UK. The reason for this is copyright and broadcasting licence terms.
We would suggest that you therefore direct your complaint on this issue to Comedy Central. You can do so via the following link:
Channel 4 is not responsible for third-party websites.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact us here at Channel 4 and for your interest in our programming.
Regards,
Rachel Salinger
Channel 4 Viewer Enquiries
This is the exact opposite of what Comedy Central say on their forum - so I will post this statement there and see what they have to say for themselves.
There is an actly petition:
petition @ComedyCentral to lift the IP block for #dailyshow video online UK http://act.ly/mr RT to sign #actly
Ahmadinejad's and Khamenei's websites were taken down yesterday — I saw the latter go down within a couple of minutes because of a DDOS attack organised via Twitter. @StopAhmadi is a good source for tweets on this. The other important use of Twitter has been distribution of proxy addresses via Twitter. This would be how most video and pictures of today's rally have gotten out.
That was Andrew quoting from my email (but no credit). It was late GMT Sunday and @stopahmadi linked to an auto-refresh address for Khamenei's website. Literally within a minute of his tweet the site was showing an error.
Drum cites what I'd seen happening by the middle of Sunday with Twitter:
There was just too much of it; it was nearly impossible to know who to trust; and the overwhelming surge of intensely local and intensely personal views made it far too easy to get caught up in events and see things happening that just weren't there.
I kindof agree with Drum but as I pointed out yesterday this was if you just followed the hashtag(s) and hadn't sifted out the best sources (like @stopamadi). I have had a big lot of new followers, I assume because I'm retweeting news and tweeting links on the situation and people have spotted this in the hashtag stream.
Looking at the past few days coverage, who Drum rates are:
The small number of traditional news outlets that do still have foreign bureaus and real expertise. The New York Times. The BBC. Al Jazeera. A few others.
The Times did have a good newsblog up by Sunday, However, on Sunday the BBC's reporting and The Guardian's was terrible because, I assume, it was a Sunday and maybe because the reporters on the ground couldn't get stories past weekend editors. It was very noticeable that the latter launched a 'liveblog' on Monday and the first few hours were spent with the blogger catching up.
I also watched the BBC go from 'Amadi won' to something a bit more nuanced and taking much more reporting from their Tehran guy and their Persian service by yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately we were still treated to the ramblings of the sort of star, flown-in reporter as seen in Drop The Dead Donkey.
Everyone appeared to be caught off guard by Tuesday's events, including most noticeably the BBC's star foreign reporter, John Simpson. And perhaps this was becuase they weren't paying enough attention to Twitter where there was intense chatter about the rally, almost all about encouraging people to go. The UK MSM reporter who has impressed me the most is Channel Four's Lindsey Hilsum.
The real star reporters has been HuffPost. Their Nico Pitney has been going with frequent updates on a liveblog since early Sunday and appears to have had little sleep.
Andy Sullivan, as well, has been open all hours and has been very good but has he repeated a lot of rumours, some posts have consisted of just a lot of tweets, and not put them in context. HuffPost has been a lot more careful and made clear what is rumour and what isn't. Where he has been good is in linking to articles which discuss the shenanigans going on in the background as well as the reaction in American politics.
Esko's website appears to have been taken down, so I have taken the liberty of republishing his guidance:
The purpose of this guide is to help you participate constructively in the Iranian election protests through twitter.
1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP’s over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distributed them discretely to bloggers in Iran. 2. Hashtags, the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88, other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation. 3. Keep you bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don’t retweet impetuosly, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow. 4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become ‘Iranians’ it becomes much harder to find them. 5. Don’t blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don’t publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don’t signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind. 6. Denial of Service attacks. If you don’t know what you are doing, stay out of this game. Only target those sites the legitimate Iranian bloggers are designating. Be aware that these attacks can have detrimental effects to the network the protesters are relying on. Keep monitoring their traffic to note when you should turn the taps on or off. 7. Do spread the (legitimate) word, it works! When the bloggers asked for twitter maintenance to be postponed using the #nomaintenance tag, it had the desired effect. As long as we spread good information, provide moral support to the protesters, and take our lead from the legitimate bloggers, we can make a constructive contribution.
Please remember that this is about the future of the Iranian people, while it might be exciting to get caught up in the flow of participating in a new meme, do not lose sight of what this is really about.
~~~~~~
Rachel Maddow discusses the use of the web by the opposition with NBC correspondent Richard Engel. Importantly, Engel notes the use of Twitter as an organisational tool.
I just love David Mitchell. Not only is he a brilliant comedian who can do slapstick as well as satire but he's a great writer whose columns never fail to hit the spot. He's smart, witty and not shy of being political. He hosts The Unbelievable Truth on Radio Four expertly. His appearance on Question Time saw him displaying all these talents with no script writer.
I'd vote for him.
I've discovered he has a YouTube channel where he delivers some excellent monologues like this one on TV rudeness:
I've never understood the appeal of shows like Dragon's Den either. I guess I like my wit more on the Gore Vidal level than the Ballantyne.
All his skills make him, IMO, just about the only candidate to do a UK version of the Daily Show or, even better, Real Time with Bill Maher. That is, world class political satire. Maher just had Gore Vidal on his show and, rare for Vidal, more than held his own with him. Similarly ranty Marcus Brigstock once tried the Daily Show format and failed miserably.
These eyewitness statements make the point that the protester who provided the medical aid to Tomlinson which was lacking from his 'protectors' was "very brave" in the face of police charges.
CBE?
Lots more stinks about what happened which deserves a bigger inquiry. The beat-up in the media about 'expected violence' in the period before by police PR, the presence of hundreds of media cameras at the exact spot where a window was broken, why one branch of RBS went without being boarded up despite being in a spot protesters were known to be converging on, how the totally peaceful climate camp was violently broken up after media withdrew. The latter has several videos which show peaceful protesters being battoned and beaten.
We know from the policing of the Kent climate camp that police lie. Ordinary Brits need to know that it's not a fringe group which is being assaulted here but their own freedom to speak out against 'the powers that be'. It is quite powerful to see that in the initial reaction to the release of the Tomkinson video in The Guardian that 'middle England', as represented by Daily Mail readers, seems to be quite aware of just whose side the cops are on: not theirs.
A war between basic cable personalities has broken out between financial channel CNBC's Jim Cramer and Comedy Central's Jon Stewart.
The skirmish started on 4 March when the Daily Show's Jon Stewart rallied against CNBC for its poor advice to viewers. Part of Stewart's segment included a clip of Mad Money host Jim Cramer making a rosy prediction about Bear Stearns just before the investment bank failed.
The next round of the fight continues tonight at 11pm ET when the Mad Money host will appear with Stewart on the Daily Show Will the basic cable hosts play nice or will they lock horns in an epic duel?
Oh, he 'played nice'! This interview is being hailed stateside as worthy of Edward R. Murrow. WhiteHouse press secretary Robert Gibbs even praised it. So it has exposed the US MSM (which, I would add, the BBC relies on as a journalistic source for the US 'news' they bring you license-fee payers) to justified, scaring criticism.
Whilst, as predicted, former Obama online strategists can name their price, election losers, the Republicans, are now seeing the web as the foundation from which to rebuild. (So, Repub online strategists can also cash in!)
George Bush's former senior advisor, Karl Rove, (aka 'Bush's brain', caricatured right in 'rap' mode) reckons that:
The political Web 2.0 is about networking and Democrats grabbed the lead. The party that figures out where Web 3.0 goes will grab the decisive high ground in high-tech warfare.
Ya think?
In the UK, despite some well received development of the PM's website, only right now does his party seem to have woken up to how far behind the Tories (and the LibDems) it is online — and how damaging that could be.
(Last year I argued that if Ken Livingstone had got his online act together in the London Mayoral election he could have potentially closed the gap).
Gee, that Obama effect reaches everywhere ...
The best of Labour's online responses thus far has come from the unlikely pairing of John Prescott and Alastair Campbell.
Their effort has even received the blessing of top Tory blogger Iain Dale.
This was the same Dale who welcomed the online competition from the more highly publicisedLabourList, created by Derek Draper, the NuLabour insider and star of 'Cash for Access'.
Founder of ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie, has also been lending a hand - well advice - to NuLabour's efforts (lunch with Draper). Says Dale, Montgomerie:
did a piece [on the BBC] critiquing Labour's online strategy this lunchtime. Sitting in the studio listening was the old bruiser himself, John Prescott. While using some pretty garbled internet language, it's true to say that John Prescott knows more about campaigning than Derek Draper will ever do. If he can transmit that knowledge into an online environment I suspect his Go Forth website will outdo the disappointing Labour List.
Prescott has started his own BLOG and this afternoon has even taken to commenting on ConservativeHome to thank Tim for his well meant advice. You can view Prescott's response to Tim HERE.
Here's Prescott's first - yes - sweet'n'endearing Vlog:
There seems to be something terribly significant about the attitude and personality of the people behind the two sites: Prescott is humble, Draper is arrogant. The UK political blogosphere's conclusion seems to have already lined up against Draper's enterprise.
For one, Draper's LabourList employs the services of the legal firm Schillings:
Without the first clue about what this might mean to other bloggers. I seriously suspect that he chose them on the basis that his wife has hired them in the past.
Schillings are libel lawyers well known for harassing bloggers who question the big and powerful.
But then newly minted 'cyber-warrior' Draper has written "I am building a site for 60 million people, not 60 bloggers", has raised the middle finger to Iain Dale's very generous and correct advice, thinks three days a week's work commitment is enough and is enhanced by stupid PR claims that his site will be like the UK's version of the Drudge-beating HuffingtonPost —he obviously already knows everything about blogs and websites because he's a work of staggering genius. Not.
Pissing off key people when he's in 'beta' launch like he - stupidly - is just says it all. It's precisely the opposite of how HuffPost built itself. Snide comments isn't how Arianna Huffington has conducted herself. She put the hard work in to learn her trade, Draper seems to have nothing but contempt for the way this stuff actually works.
And it's partisan contempt - which is the entire problem with his approach thus far and why Prescott is far more likely to suceed. Despite all the rhetoric and colum inches just look at the content, the product. Where, for example, is the anti-third runway article?
"60 million people" aren't going to visit a clearly partisan (and dull) website. If Draper thinks otherwise he has everything left to learn. Which he appears to have no interest in. Because he already knows it all ...
Over the pond, the key difference is that it's not like the Republicans (GOP) are starting from nothing. (Which is my sad characterisation of Labour's position).
As with conservatives here, they have some very smart webbies, like Patrick Ruffini, who have been helping them for some years now. But they've been way outgunned by the Democrats for a while now on all online fronts, most importantly in the lack of enthusiasm and lack of smarts expressed in online by the party itself.
This is changing. On websites like RebuildtheParty.com, directly inspired by Obama's efforts, more than 1,300 people have submitted ideas for using online social networks to modernize how the party raises money and mobilizes supporters. Five of six candidates in the 30 January election for Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman have endorsed the coalition's plan to make "winning the technology war with the Democrats ... the RNC's number one priority in the next four years."
The conservative wing of the American blogosphere in pretty large - and influential, they perpetuated a lot of vote winning memes in the election - and they are supporting the politicians about-turn vis online campaigning.
The problem left to be dealt with is that - like Labour - the GOP has always had a top-down approach to the Internet, using it primarily to deliver campaign messages rather than mobilize supporters.
At a conference last month at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Mike Connell, a longtime GOP web consultant and leading member of McCain's Web team, listened to Obama's Internet gurus tout their use of online organizing. He was skeptical. "Conservatives are more likely to look for information online than look for a group they can join," he said.
The other half of McCain's Web team, Rebecca Donatelli, agreed. "Our users are not using the Internet in the same way," she said. "You're reaching different audiences." She admitted, "there are a lot of opportunities for us to grow," but defended the campaign's approach, insisting that it was simply "out-resourced."
But it may not just be a question of the right vendors (or consultants) it seems to be about a more basic understanding of the interactive - and somewhat anarchic - nature of the Web. A joint examination by the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Reporting and the Berkman Center during the 2008 presidential campaign revealed a fundamental difference in the candidates' approach to blogging.
The study found that while the Obama campaign reached out to activist bloggers in order to communicate with campaign volunteers and feed them into its online social networking site, My.BarackObama.com, the McCain campaign took a top-down approach to the horizontal network of blogs and used it as an echo chamber for its ideas.
This approach is partly explained by the fact that McCain's blogger outreach coordinator, Patrick Hynes, heads a firm that advises corporations on how to use the blogosphere as part of their public relations strategies.
In 2006, he was accused of masquerading as a 20-year old blogger to promote the telecom corporation Verizon's position on cable regulation. That same year, he blogged in support of McCain without disclosing that he was on the payroll as a political consultant for McCain's political action committee, Straight Talk America. Not long afterward, Hyynes was outed by the National Review's Jim Geraghty.
As president of New Media Strategics, Hynes touts his understanding of "how bloggers receive and process information... what energizes them and, just as important, what turns them off." One of the company's services is "alliance building," which makes use of its existing relationship with bloggers to "create powerful alliances to deliver your brand message and reputation through the New Media."
When McCain became the GOP's lead candidate, Hynes reached out to "top-tier, right-of-center bloggers" such as Red State's Erick Erickson, Hot Air's Ed Morrissey, Jim Geraghty at National Review Online and Glenn Reynolds - aka InstaPundit - at Pajamas Media.
We pitch stories to folks online in much the same way a campaign pitches to talk radio journalists. We give them our information, and try to give them our angle [aka 'talking points']. Usually when I'm talking to them its not a big stretch to write something that would agree with our world view.
Doesn't this sound just like how NuLabour might approach 'new media'? Like something Draper might say?
Hynes touts this service on the New Media Strategics website as a "blog release" - conceptualizing, drafting and delivering "blog-friendly content (including podcasts and vodcasts) for placement on friendly or relevant blog venues."
It was all about getting information down from the top of the campaign to individuals. That's why we started the McCainNow.com and LetsGetThisRight.com and... social networking sites so that supporters could build a network.
Marston said his groups received no financial support or direction from the McCain campaign, but were so involved among online activists that Meghan McCain (John McCain's daughter) misidentified Marston as the "McCain e-campaign coordinator" on her blog.
Now he is working to register Let'sGetThisRight.com as an educational foundation and political action committee. "Adversity is a terrible thing to waste," said Marston.
Says Karl Rove's IT guru, Mike Connell:
The blogosphere is not just another communications channel. It is an activism channel, a fundraising channel. We're getting caught up on that point of view.
Many conservative activists have looked to groups such as MoveOn.org for inspiration. MoveOn was formed in response to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, it has been cited in some accounts as a factor which helped propel the Democratic Party to power in the 2006 midterm US Congressional elections.
"I believe we should be looking at the left as the model," said David All, founder of TechRepublican.com and Slatecard - a website modeled on ActBlue.com, which provided important fundraising infrastructure for Democrats.
All acknowledges that MoveOn.org was organic in its growth, but says the left structure is actually "very top down, even Barack Obama. They just do a good job at making an illusion that people are connected through others. You get an email from someone who lives in your zip code and you think that's bottom up, and its really just a very smart directive from within the top campaign structure."
Some of this is true - staying 'on message' had a certain resonance during the campaign because the fear of an electoral loss remained so great amongst Democrats. This may not remain true if Obama pisses off the netroots. There's already been signs of this over the choice of Rick Warren for the inaugural and through some dodgy manipulation of contributed priorities on the handover website, change.gov.
But all the new technology won't help Republicans unless they have a message that appeals to the grassroots - a very key point in understanding why and how Obama's online tactics worked as well as they did (compared to - say - Hilliary's).
"I get frustrated with all this talk of what technology we need to build," said Jon Henke, formerly New Media Director for the Republican Communications Office, and co-founder of TheNextRight.com.
Unless you have an idea of what you want to do with it, it doesn't matter.
Ultimately, Henke argues the grassroots:
Needs to develop its gravitational pull with a compelling story.
Cue John Prescott.
Says All:
Republicans have to find a message, then we need a messenger, or vice versa. And from there we'll start building the tools. Amazing tools will never build a house. You have to have a carpenter who can use the tools to build a house.
For NuLabour, this ain't Derek Draper. Shock - it might well be John Prescott.
The Internet Watch Foundation [IWF] says it is still reconsidering whether its ban should remain on the image of a young girl used on the Scorpions' album Virgin Killer, after that ban prevented a number of British users accessing Wikipedia.
A spokeswoman for the IWF said that to her knowledge it was the first time in its decade-long history that any image or page banned by the IWF had been reassessed, and the first time that any page or image on Wikipedia had been banned. The IWF normally bans more than 10,000 images and associated web pages every year.
Here's Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales saying "C'mon! Do your wurst!" (And sounding a mite ignorant of their exact legal position).
And the IWF leader paddling furiously:
And I feel sorry for this poor mite! He's in over his head but trying, trying to do the right thing.
Web hosts must not wait for an image to be declared unlawful by a court when they receive a complaint, albeit only a court can declare an image unlawful. If they wait, there is every chance that the declaration will come at their own trial.
Wales told Channel Four:
How do we draw up a boundary line that allows both routine internet expression and not pedophilia? The Internet Watch Foundation's system has been in operation for a number of years. Is it out of date?
Gonna help, Jimmy?
So what next?
This is really, purely a technocognisenti furore, despite its brief reign as top read story on news.bbc.co.uk. Although I can imagine the Mail et al bent out of shape trying to take it all in. Grey is the colour rather than back'n'white. The Rebekkah Wade's of this world are now a wee bit lost.
But it's truly much simpler. Simply put: what does the IWF actually do to combat online child abuse? If that scourge has moved on from their simplistic techniques, what use are they?
I still doubt that much will be made of this point but the answer is simple: resource those who can excise these bastards from the net. Amateurism is a waste of time.
Is Britain capable? From January IWF, the charity, will be assessing 'extreme images' on behalf of the government (they already assess 'race hate', bet you didn't know that). Having read of a woman who asked of her local plod whether a 'borderline' image (now's there's a truly British tradition) was 'illegal' - she was referred on to the IWF then the Ministry, no one could give her a 'straight' answer - I have not much hope. The borderline' image is at the top of the post.
WILL THE LEFT TAX BRITAIN'S SWANS? DO IMMIGRANTS DESTROY THE MEMORY OF DIANA? COULD TEENAGE SEX TAX YOUR HOUSE? COULD GAYS DESTROY YOUR HOUSE? WILL POLITICAL CORRECTNESS DESTROY CAR DRIVERS? COULD CHANNEL 4 CHEAT BRITISH SOVEREIGNTY?
The Guardian carried an interesting story earlier today about Channel Four News' Alex Thompson's interrogation of an IOC spokesperson at a Beijing press conference. Thompson is a very impressive journalist and his subsequent report is far better and more illustrative of the context than the Guardian's edit.
Here is his report.
I can show you what I'm talking about and, maybe, help this go viral and therefore aid Channel Four News, because they have turned on embedding in their Brightcove subscription. Unlike The Guardian's Brightcove subscription. They urge you, as does the BBC, to 'link to this video'. C4 News do this despite the C4 News video carrying no advertising.
Presumably The Guardian's business model is that they repay the investment with pageviews and ads, their reported deal suggests this. C4 I would imagine make business assumptions around building brand (their quality journalism), loyalty and a future where they can deliver advertising via embeds. Infact the C4 wide Brightcove deal, focussed on monetisation, strongly suggests branding is all for news.
Although the Guardian has retained #1 online UK newspaper site (where I think its long term and early investment is paying off because they've built more experience), I can't help thinking that not switching on embedding doesn't help, long term. Apart from Brightcove, other providers could provide in-video advertising, therefore losing you no revenue. They have a very strong, very granulated video library now which could be achingly viral. I can't imagine it's getting the views it deserves.
According to the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM:
More and more German citizens use the Internet to performing authorities courses.43 percent of Germans in 2007, electronic services of public administration claimed.
And the UK is slipping down the rankings (p. excuse translation).
Putting a spanner in the gears of the drive to council web ads, Accessible banner adverts, from the RNIB.
Usability will undoubtedly prove to be a key factor in the success of the online channel, particularly when it comes to transactional support for key user services. Compared to last year’s average score of just 45.5%, this year’s sample has performed a lot better against our guidelines. However, there is still significant scope for improvement
Tops for Webcredible? Dan Champion's old stamping ground: Clackmannanshire.
"The business case for accessible technology is compelling. IT that is accessible for disabled people is easier for everyone to use and improves everyone's productivity.
"Indeed, it's estimated that over 60 per cent of the workforce would be more efficient were they to use existing accessibility features."
HMRC chief operating officer Steve Lamey said: "We want to raise the profile of the business case for having a disability competent IT sector, not just to suppliers but to every chief information officer in Europe.
Microsoft is lining up Senior PC for the UK. "The PC will come with simplified software for email, word processing as well as managing prescriptions, finances, travel planning and photographs." Age Concern and Help the Aged are the co-conspirators.
theconnectedrepublic.org is a new community space, developed by Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group. The aim is to create a space where people with ideas can meet, share their thinking and link up with each other. The site is open to anyone who wants to get involved. They want this to be a user-led, user-dominated space :}
Actually it's Minister Watson. Praise where praise due.
Great primer from Jack Aaronson at ClickZ on new developments in ecommerce producing A Widget World?
Companies like Citibank should hop on this bandwagon and create true mini ATM interfaces that allow users to perform various banking transactions via the iPhone. The iPhone interface would need to operate more like an ATM and less like a Web site (which is how existing online banking tools are designed).
What do Barbra Streisand and the Tunisian president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, have in common? They both tried to block material they dislike from appearing on the internet. And they were both spectacularly unsuccessful.
Although people do not generally think of the spy agency as an information-sharing organization, that's an important function of the CIA. And like executives of news organizations, [it's] feeling pressure to make content accessible to an audience that now expects to stay connected from any location.
"People don't always sit at their desks," he said. "If we are really going to be successful, we need to get information to our customers whenever, wherever…by whatever means necessary."
Fowler said the WIRe, which has been online in its current form for less than two years, includes several Web 2.0 tools from text and video to social bookmarks and Really Simple Syndication feeds. "We are really trying to push the envelope," Fowler said.
Content is published seven days a week, and Fowler was awarded the Intelligence Medal of Merit in 2007 for his work on the unique, user-driven format of the publication. The WIRe's newspaper-like interface, which reflects editorial decisions about what should go above the fold, is released six times weekly, he said.
In a sense, Fowler added, the product is like a wire service but more scholarly in style. Reports combine field intelligence, open-source information and analysis.
Fowler said the goal is to use various online tools to make the reports more interlinked for the customer, and there's an opportunity for readers to comment on a particular article and follow links to other, related articles.
The collaborative tools "are a means to an end," he said.
Every three or four days, on average, a new video or audio from one of al-Qaeda's commanders is released online by as-Sahab, the terrorist network's in-house propaganda studio. Even as its masters dodge a global manhunt, as-Sahab produces documentary-quality films, iPod files and cellphone videos. Last year it released 97 original videos, a sixfold increase from 2005.
Jakob has been bizzy:
The 1% of websites that don't suck can be made even better by strengthening exceptional user performance, eliminating miscues, and targeting company-wide use and unmet needs.
Different traffic sources imply different reasons for why visitors might immediately leave your site. Design to keep deep-link followers engaged through additional pageviews.
More wisdom.
It's unfair to blame Google for the facts of information foraging. The easier it is to get around an information space, the earlier people will leave any one location and surf to the next beckoning hit. That's a fact, and Google is just designing the best product it can.
If we didn't have Google, it would be Yahoo and Live Search that were making us stupid, even though maybe they wouldn't make us quite as stupid, because they would make it a little harder to find the next promising place to go, and thus make people dig a bit deeper at each site.
Also, I have observed the same reading behavior in user research since 1997 (the year before Google was founded) so it's definitely not Google's fault that the very nature of the Web makes users treat individual websites contemptuously. Yes, the behavior is stronger now, with more people that ever using search and diving into sites for very short dips, but fundamentally it's the same style of behavior.
After all, I talked about the importance of designing and writing for search long before Google, and the guidelines are pretty much the same. It's simply become more important to follow them.
The guilty party is not Google, it's the Web.
And, from salesforce.com numbers:
Remember that IE7 was released in October 2006: 20 months ago.
Thus, the UPTAKE SPEED is slightly less than 2% per month (in terms of IE users upgrading from the old version to the new one).
In a novel approach, the defense in an obscenity trial in Florida plans to use publicly accessible Google search data to try to persuade jurors that their neighbors have broader interests than they might have thought.
As the guy with the job of delivering the UK Catalyst Awards, I'd of course prefer to take more optimistic view.
But I agree that the critical thing is to move from excited blah blah to real impact. I'm trying to bring to catalyst as much grit as I can from my experience in co-founding social innovation camp.
We'll have to wait and see whether catalyst phase two can produce the kind of mentoring, incubating and financing that will deliver dynamic social startups.
For the government to truly serve its customers on the Web it needs to address the following issues: 1. Get away from a technology obsession 2. Manage customer top tasks, not government websites 3. Get politicians off government websites 4. Stop government vanity publishing 5. Develop a government archive
The blog is a bold move for TSA [Transportation Security Administration | U.S. Department of Homeland Security] because it fully embraces public comments on what the agency is doing wrong, said Stephen Goldsmith, director of Harvard University’s Innovations in American Government program.
“They’re going to insult you whether you have a blog or not,” Goldsmith said. “You might as well learn from what they’re saying.”
Using discussion boards and e-mails, [Environment Protection Agency] EPA’s new social Web site, called National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information, has pulled comments from across government and the country to help [EPA’s chief information officer, Molly] O’Neill as she fashions a new information-sharing policy.
Since O’Neill came on board last year, EPA has embarked on four such projects that integrate blogs, wikis, discussion boards and other social networking Web tools, which are collectively referred to as Web 2.0, into EPA’s business.
“The technology is not complicated, it’s just a different way of doing business. And getting people to do business in a different way is culture change and that’s a challenge,” O’Neill said.
When asked to consider specific ways that government might use social media, the respondents showed strongest support for:
1. Websites where government scientists or experts could answer the public’s questions 2. Websites that would allow Canadians to express their views on different issues 3. Audio tours or pod casts of historical and natural sites across Canada that could be downloaded.
Summary: Linear vs. non-linear. Author-driven vs. reader-driven. Storytelling vs. ruthless pursuit of actionable content. Anecdotal examples vs. comprehensive data. Sentences vs. fragments.
We should accept that the Web is too fast-paced for big-picture learning. No problem; we have other media, and each has its strengths. At the same time, the Web is perfect for narrow, just-in-time learning of information nuggets — so long as the learner already has the conceptual framework in place to make sense of the facts.
For example, I dated "learning around the campfire" to 32,000 years ago to coincide with the emergence of high culture and the Cro-Magnons. Not that the Neanderthals didn't have campfires — they simply didn't have the cultural depth of modern humans, so I don't think their storytelling was equal to my seminars. So, did I actually remember that Cro-Magnon culture started 32,000 years ago with the Lascaux cave paintings? No, I looked that little fact up online.
Now where do you think this clip is from?
More than 10 new e-Government services will be launched in the next six months, while more than 15 e-Government services will come online within two years, Secretary for Commerce & Economic Development Frederick Ma says.
He told the Legislative Council today the e-Government services include the transport information system and the electronic health record system.
The bureau will also launch a geographical user interface to help users locate information and implement a unified identity management framework to verify their identity and safeguard their personal data.
A pilot scheme in forming district cyber centres will be conducted to provide hardware and technical support for children in low-income families and needy residents to access online resources.
Mr Ma added all Government bureaux and departments have revamped their websites to comply with Internet accessibility standards stated in the internal guidelines for information dissemination since 2003.
An inter-departmental committee regularly reviews the guidelines and released the latest version early this year.
The social networking scene is settling down into separate camps. The very young are with Bebo. The music crowd are still on MySpace. The obsessive technophiles are on Twitter - latest Tweet from one sad West Coast blogger: "I have 3,500 unanswered direct messages. Please do not send more." But the mass of students and young professionals seem to be gravitating towards Facebook.
Is the Daily Mail editing the government too?
"In the same way that there are standards that are essential to broadcasting, in this converging world I believe there should be a set of standards online".
House of Lords two-up now on the Commons as they launch a YouTube Channel.
The five videos aim to explain the "role, impact and relevance" of the House of Lords and "reach out to young people and other audiences who may not be involved in politics or well informed about the role of parliament".
Wired's Thomas Goetz makes a great point about Obama's FightTheSmears.com.
By putting their own website out there front-and-center, and then getting everybody to link to it (starting with all the media covering the launch of the site), the result will be to drive fightthesmears.com towards the top of a Google search on, say, "obama muslim" or "michelle obama whitey". Ideally, if enough of the pro-Obama network links to fightthesmears.com, it'll drive the sites that peddle in the rumor-mongering, which are now the first results on said searches, off the top of the results list. Ideal long term result: any curious low-information voter who eventually bothers to google these pesky rumors will immediately be led to the debunking rather than the rumor.
And this is coming over here too. The disgusting Melanie Philips repeats the dirt for The Spectator.
Eric Schmidt thinks Google should extend a helping hand to 'old media'. He "hopes its recently acquired advertising service DoubleClick will aid newspapers as they struggle to corral more online revenue".
Yes, this is a wonderful thing that the Internet has democratized political financing in an unprecedented way. What is even better, the fact that the progressive guy figured out the new money regime first may catapult him from freshman senator to the White House, opening one of the most exciting chapters in American political history.
But it is not insignificant that in the process, vast sums of money are flooding into the political arena.
Worth something in twenty years will be ... McCain condoms! (Barack ones too).
Christopher Ciccone, brother to Madonna Ritchie (nee Ciccone), is writing a book. Met them both (if by meet you can count 'hello, this is ...' 'hello, goodbye') in my gossip column days. Some daft queen thought she'd enjoy a tacky drag troupe and being showered by glitter at a not-that-glamorous 'do' and birthday bash for Chris by the harbour in Sydney. As I recall, they didn't enjoy Oz very much .. wonder if that'll make his book ... ?
Earls Court, location of this week's GC 2008 Expo, was replete with [sic] beautiful people and futuristic technology.
The fact that the venue was also hosting Graduate Fashion Week and a Doctor Who exhibition may have contributed in some small way to these qualities. But you could not beat Kable's conference when it came to threatening behaviour from chairpeople.
Brian Derry of Assist said he would expel people from the session he chaired if they violated the no-mobile policy - dancing to the tunes of their ringtones. Alternatively, they could pay £10 to the charity of his choice.
Mark Logsdon of Barclays, speaking at a session on security, revealed that his organisation charges £50 for rogue mobile vocalisations. But after adjusting for banking salaries, that works out around a hafpenny.
It might not have been appropriate for Dave Mitchell of BT, chairing a session on the NHS National Programme for IT, to have punished the use of telephones. But he did threaten a collective punishment for the audience, if it failed to show suitable interest: a video nasty on the auditorium's big screen.
Luckily, Mitchell decided it was necessary to deploy a video of former National Programme guvnor Richard Granger on his holidays. The threat was enough.
Simon Dickson alerts me to some yawnsome Sky News liveblogging activity regarding the Crew + Nantwich by-election, which reminds me of a viral video featuring the not-quite-Gwyneth candidate - Tamsin Dunwoody.
4,600 views is quite a lot for a UK-sourced political viral and it's a good one, 'cos she sounds like a nulabour robot.
There's no video response from Labour. Opportunity? Lost.
No one's posting their content. And it's not happening even when they have a Real Life Star attached in the shape of Vera Duckworth.
Get a load of this:
How to NOT do this. Vera barely gets a word in. Let the showbiz legend sell your bleedin' candidate! Make her the producer! Make the thing viral! It's not a 'black art'! The other videos feature a parade of Ed Balls types playing up for the camera and looking like dicks. Doesn't work! Vera's the shining star amidst the dross. Create a viral with just her and you'd be talkin' ...
How much is Labour spending on marketing and where are they spending it? Not on consultants sourced from the Obama campaign. Obviously.
“Do you practise homosexuality with men? Take that homosexual man and throw him off the mountain.”
“If I were to call homosexuals perverted, dirty, filthy dogs that should be murdered, that’s my freedom of speech isn’t it? They’ll say: “No”, I’m not tolerant. But they feel that it’s okay to say something about the Prophet.”
"Whoever changes his religion from Al Islam to anything else – kill him"
And how, after a ridiculous 'investigation', West Midlands Police (and the Crown Prosecution Service) instead of prosecuting these people for inciting violence made a complaint to Ofcom about the editing of the programme claiming it was 'stirring up racial hatred'. A complaint which itself was technically odd.
I noted that this was the same police who had a fraught relationship with their local gay and lesbian community.
And how police in general had had to be forced into taking action against murder music, dancehall reggae which is all about how to kill gays and lesbians.
I even found myself on the same side as the Editor of the Daily Telegraph, Charles Moore, who said:
I do not know whether the Dispatches programme is right in every detail. But it clearly raises serious, important questions - about extremists in our midst, about the way apparently moderate organisations give them shelter, about the Saudi Arabian network that supports them.
What security agencies call "thematic analyses" show that, at present, the problems of Islamist extremism are particularly acute, especially in prisons and universities, in the West Midlands area.
Yet the West Midlands police and the Crown Prosecution Service decide that the target of their wrath should be not people who want to undermine this country, but some journalists who want to expose them.
Are they fit to protect us?
Late last year, Ofcom threw the complaint out and Channel Four then decided to launch a court action for defamation.
Andy Duncan, Channel 4 chief executive, said at the time:
West Midlands Police acted in a calculated fashion - they made no attempt to discuss their concerns about the film with us in advance of going public with their complaint to Ofcom knowing that an allegation of 'fakery' would generate significant media interest. Their action gave legitimacy to people preaching a message of hate to British citizens.
After being dragged to court, this apology and £100k payout is the result (half of the payout covers costs, the other goes to the Rory Peck Trust for freelance news gatherers and their families in times of need).
Following an independent investigation by the broadcasting regulator Ofcom, we now accept that we were wrong to make these allegations. We now accept that there was no evidence that the broadcaster or programme makers had misled the audience or that the programme was likely to encourage or incite criminal activity. A review of the evidence (including untransmitted footage and scripts) by Ofcom demonstrated that the programme had accurately represented the material it had gathered and dealt with the subject matter responsibly and in context.
We accept, without reservation, the conclusions of Ofcom and apologise to the programme makers for the damage and distress caused by our original press release.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sg0_NWMlqoGf94tzO3UzBzLEjE320YsNSeCsgwc9YSzIFENYFQW8RB6kDw5QjmSjmQ9eWtAqZHNIuWvIFtIYvc9zXLc7hxBzeSHcI0rsyPgtSd7x_roxaqfKqwcd96EeHRfNfEbg60QNOyZI4myvJc=s0-d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sQ9oWB0KZ0tFMllXek67dKW9Yaud8_kHYTGVeK_oRcovuDGS4PkN3t_vV0l_WYgbyiM9Q6lQi7BI1KZdrjkEZ6a5JnozRlmOm7cDFOL4gTxvU2hptpTs3XLFlbQF8BvWW3CU3sYZFI-OWLJP_9K1EW=s0-d)
@PubSecBloggers
